In 1950, Dalton Trumbo, a top Hollywood screenwriter, was sent to federal prison for maintaining that his political beliefs were a personal matter and none of Congress' business. After serving his sentence he was punished again when the studios barred him from working.
His playwright son, Christopher Trumbo, tells the story in Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted, which Rep Stage is presenting through Sept. 28.
James Dalton Trumbo, born in Colorado in 1905, had many of the characteristics traditionally ascribed to Westerners. He was principled, strong-willed and something of a maverick.
He began a screenwriting career in 1936, turning out such movies as Kitty Foyle, for which Ginger Rogers won an Academy Award.
In 1943, he joined the American Communist Party. World War II was in progress; the United States and the Soviet Union were fighting Nazi Germany. The party was a vocal supporter of the Soviet Union, and many Hollywood liberals felt that joining it was a gesture of support.
Trumbo wrote several war movies, including Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and A Guy Named Joe (both starred Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson). He was too old for the Army but saw action as a war correspondent in the South Pacific.
In 1945, the Soviet Union emerged from the war, and its army overran Eastern Europe, turning countries into puppet states. The U.S. government saw this as a threat. The United States was a strong nation of 150 million people; the American Communist Party numbered its members in the thousands. Despite these odds, many Americans were terrified and demanded action to root out subversives.
Congress never outlawed the party, but there were ways to punish members. At a session of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Trumbo was asked whether he was a member of the Screen Writers' Guild and the Communist Party. As a matter of principle, he did not answer. He was indicted for contempt of Congress. In 1950, Trumbo and nine other screenwriters - the newspapers called them the Hollywood Ten - were convicted on that charge and sent to prison. Christopher Trumbo's play is a staged reading about his father's career and character. Director Steven Carpenter brings the man and his world to brilliant life by getting the actors on their feet and treating the script as theater.
In Nigel Reed's superb performance, Trumbo is a man of inner strength, with a literate, biting sense of humor. His manner is formal until the audience knows him better; then he loosens up delightfully.
